Event Planning Tactics to Increase Your Participant Engagement

Many corporate event planners get so overwhelmed in the organisational details and tend to overlook the more substantial component of any corporate event such as feedback, guest interaction, and participant engagement. Guest participation should be a top priority in ensuring events a success, aren’t they the reason why you went all the trouble of choosing the perfect venue and planning on the details of the event for optimum satisfaction?

1. Open the Event with an Ice Breaker

This is one of the best practices when planning events. You should leave enough time for participants to engage with one another.  Some examples include:

– Storytelling

Break your guests into smaller teams, let them share ideas or experiences they have from the last event that they participated in. This useful crowdsourcing method will also give you enough ideas to run on the next event you will be organising.

– Event highlights

Break your audience into groups and get them to write the best parts of the event. Then ask them to share the list to the entire group, with a reason why they chose or enjoy those parts of the events.

– Networking

Give your attendees a moment to get to know participants. You can either ask them to go around and introduce themselves or put them in pairs and ask to learn and explore the strengths and weaknesses of their new-found colleague

2. Create a Space for Everyone

 It’s typical in meetings or events that a person or a group will stand out. There will be the best minds and the most experienced sharing all their acquired wisdom and tested knowledge. Avoid leaving a fraction of your audience getting entertained and focus on how to make them interact with others.  Split the audience into groups and let them interact with other people. This will limit dominant participants from taking over the events and will allow you to engage non-dominant participants to express their knowledge and expertise.

3. Polls and Q&A 

Believe it or not, some participants attend to mingle and interact with other participants. Limit lengthy presentations and ask speakers to allow the audience to take part by asking questions.

Mental breaks are necessary to ensure that your audience is absorbing every bit of information being shared by speakers and other participants.

Live polls, on the other hand, gives them the feeling of being important. The thing is that participants can lose attention if they are bombarded with lengthy presentations. You must ensure they are actively participating in your event.

4. Use Visual Presentations 

Visual Content is the way to engage. As a rule of thumb, we only have a few seconds to grab somebody’s attention and keep them engaged. Ask speakers of their usual format and suggest the use of visual presentations to make the event more live and interactive. This ensures the event to be a hit and your participants well-engaged and your speakers update their medium.

These are some creative methods and event planning tactics you can apply that don’t require significant time and resources. When planning an event, it is vital to ensure that participants get the most out of everything especially the educational part.  The feeling they get during the event impacts the feedback on the event as useful or successful. Keep participant engagement on top of your list the next time you are planning an event.

At End2End Events, we are always ready for a challenge and exciting tips on how to engage your participants. Contact us today, Specialists in Events Planning in Melbourne at 1300 095 123. You can also stay tuned for more tips by following us on Facebook.

Tips for Stress-Free Event Planning

Event planning is incredibly stressful, specially for those that are not professional event planners. Well, to be honest even professional event planners are experiencing the stress. The time is not enough in the day, there are missing supplies, checking the venue, there are so many things that go in planning an event, not to mention a number of instances where things can go wrong.

Event planning is not for the weak of heart as it can really be stressful even at the very best time. So how do you do this without going crazy and making sure that the end result is worth it?

Here are some tips that will hopefully reduce the stress level and make the event planning fun.

1. Start planning early and create a checklist - planning early and creating a checklist will not only keep you on target with clear direction, it will also help you in providing essential information to your event team who can work in tandem with you so you can execute the event well.
   Checklist Every Event Planner must Use
2. Establish the event specifics - determine the type of the event, the date, time and location.
3. Stick to a budget - write down your budget and stick to it. Your budget will determine how you’re going to structure your event and what purchases you’ll make.
4. Choose your venue and your catering - Oftentimes you’ll have to choose the venue and the catering for the event to make things work. The earlier you decide where the venue is, the better is the price. Most places hike up the price closer to the event date. 
   ***pro tip - ask for a package deal if you decide to go with the venue for catering and decorating. 
5. Do the marketing - now that you have the details for the event, you can now start working on the marketing. Choose your marketing materials. This includes the initial invitation, the reminder, and the follow up thank you message.
6. Pause and reflect - After the event, make sure you take note of what you did and what are the things that you think needs improvement. 

Bottom line:

Planning an event can really be stressful but it doesn’t have to be like that. The sooner you fine-tune your process, the easier your event planning will be.

If you need help planning your next event contact The End2End Team for a stress-free, hassle-free experience on 1300 095 123 or use the contact form.